The Resistance Movement in Buczacz

Translated by Melanie Rosenberg

After thirty-three months of
torture and cruelty unprecedented in human annals, the defeated German forces
retreated. The day after the entry of the Soviet army (March 26, 1944), more
than 800 Jews emerged from their hiding places. According to the information I
managed to glean, this was the highest percentage of Jews who survived among
all the cities and villages in eastern Galizia. There is no doubt that we must
attribute this percentage of Jewish survival to the organization of activities
by the resistance movement, whose core arose in Buchach. Their concepts were
circulated by the group to surrounding villages, meriting understanding and
support. The fear of collective responsibility being thrust upon the Jewish
population as a whole, as well as the fact that they were unarmed and lacked
proper instruction for the ranks of fighters, prevented the leaders of the
resistance movement from taking vigorous steps at the start of the organization.

In our judgment, the slightest
discovery of a desire for uprising and war could bring about the immediate
destruction of all the Jews of Buchach. This fact must be recalled by all who
wonder at the frequent ease with which thousands of Jews were brought to their
deaths, with no resistance whatsoever.

The Germans entered Buchach on
Shabbat (Saturday), July 5, 1941, and the very next day a large force of
Ukrainian police rose up and began attacking the Jewish population. In the
initial period, the fate of the Jews of Buchach was determined by Ukrainian
policemen, backed by a Ukrainian committee of local intelligentsia. During this
period we were witness to attacks on Jews exiled from sub-Carpathian Russia,
and to massacres perpetrated by Ukrainian troops. The local Jews would receive
their persecuted brothers with friendship, sharing with them their last crumbs
of bread, and made efforts to redeem them monetarily from the hands of the
murderers. Word reached of a pogrom in Tarnopol. Immediately following the
army's entry there, more than 3000 Jews were slain. After the war, the army
claimed that it had no knowledge whatsoever of what had transpired in the
hinterland. In Buchach, each day Jews were conscripted for labor, where they
were tortured most cruelly. (All of this was perpetrated by the Ukrainian
police, who claimed to be taking revenge upon Jewish communists for their part
in exiling Ukrainians to Siberia.)

During this initial period, a
Jewish Committee (later to become Judenrat) arose, taking upon
itself to use monetary bribes to temper the insane, criminal acts of
bloodthirsty Germans.

On one of these mornings, in
the second half of July 1941, the Ukrainians compiled a list of Jews comprising
more than 1500 people from the ages of 16-40. Thanks to the intervention of the
Austrian commander of the forces passing through Buchach, the act, which was
committed three weeks later, did not occur at this time.

In the middle of the month of
August 1941, the Gestapo arrived for the first time. They compiled a list, and
upon the advice of the Ukrainian Committee, selected 350 people from among the
intelligentsia and the youth to execute by firing squad the following day on
Fedor Hill. Two members of the Judenraat were murdered, Dr. Y. Stern Vakaner,
as well as Dr. Judenfreund, who were summoned by the Gestapo. Only a youth by
the name of Mendel survived. What pain and suffering plagued the hearts of the
mothers and women who came daily to the Judenraat seeking help in searching
for their relatives, under the illusion that their loved ones were still alive
and had been sent to work on the Zabroch River. Meanwhile their bodies lay
buried in a mass grave on Fedor Hill, a mere two kilometers distance from the
city.

The same morning of that month
of August began an odyssey of suffering and pain that ended in the obliteration
of the Jews of our city, and of the devastation of those Jews who had been
exiled here from neighboring villages. After the above list was compiled, a
period of semi-stability reached the Jews. With it came the illusion that
perhaps a German diplomatic breakthrough was in the offing for the Jews,
fueling the hope that the German shield would soon be broken. The tasks of the
Judenraat included supplying workers and assisting the Gestapo force, who came
once a week from Chortkov to plunder Jewish wealth. The systematic destruction
of the Jewish People began to be carried out. The Jews were illegally evicted,
an order was issued requiring them to wear a special sign, they were denied the
right of free travel and change of residence. In addition to the tax on gold
and silver, furs and other household possessions, (confiscation of furniture,
linens, and silverware), their food rations were reduced and a special Jewish
ghetto was erected. Jews were permitted to live only on the left side of the
city, the border being delineated by Railroad Street, continuing to the bridge
on the road to Chortkov. The Jewish population, concentrated in this manner,
thus became an easy target for the actions that followed.

B.

In December 1941 the Judenraat
received instructions to dispatch a group of laborers to Borki-Wilki near
Ternopol. On a winter night, bitterly cold, the Jewish police
(Ordnungs-Dienst) brought the Judenraat orders for mobilization within two
hours. Each worker was instructed to take a backpack, blanket, change of
clothing and underwear, and food for a one-week duration. Among the 200
workers, we, a group of 15 Jewish laborers who worked in the
Ligenschaft (formerly the manor of Pototsky) also received the
mobilization order. We assembled in one of the barns and took the decision not
to report. That same night the German police and the Ukrainian police carried
out searches in our homes, from which our families had fled, with the intent to
round us up by force. We hid in various hiding places throughout the manor.
Each day the police would come to capture us, but our comrades stood guard and
we took cover whenever the police appeared. This pursuit continued several
weeks, until we were given assurances that we would not be transferred from
this place. We were granted green permits and we, in essence, were protected.
In spite of this, we did not sleep in our own homes for more than half a year,
as it was clear to us that we would not be forgiven for our deed. We emerged
victors from our first resistance experiment and this served as the beginning
of our organization, to which we enrolled the majority of the youth over time.

From the Julagim in
the area of Tornopol came word of acts of destruction being carried out there,
and meanwhile the Jews of Buchach were found in the camps of Borki-Wilki and
Kamjonka. SS forces, who stood at the head of the camps along with the
Ukrainians, tortured the Jews concentrated there, with no consideration for
human life. Hunger rations caused dissention among people, and the slightest
offence was punished by hanging or shooting. We learned details of the
situation at Julagim from one of our comrades, M. Weitz, who was
captured and taken to this camp. Nevertheless, after one week in Komjunka, he
succeeded in cutting the barbed wire that surrounded the camp and evaded heavy
guard to make his way back to Buchach via fields and forests. The Judenraat
organized assistance, sent weekly shipments of wagons filled with food and warm
clothing, and using gifts and bribery, attempted to redeem people from the
camps or at least ease their fate. Moshe Berger is to be especially commended
for risking his life to travel there each week.

Jews began arriving from
Stanislavov, Kalush, Talomach, Horodenka, Kolomia, and they sought refuge. From
them we heard accounts of the annihilation of the Jews of Stanislavov. Gister
Bildner of Talomach, who was spirited out of the Janovoska camp in Lvov as a
corpse, told us heinous episodes of the acts of the Gestapo and their chief
executioner, the head of the Jonovosta Camp, Wilhauz.

The relative calm which
pervaded Buchach was halted by one of four Operations-Groups (einzach-groupen)
made up of SS men, who carried out the actzia in October 1942 and
afterwards an additional actzia in November of the same year. During these
attacks, the SS men and the Ukrainian police encircled the Jewish Quarter,
pulled the Jews out into the streets and rounded them up to the square near the
former District Office, called Kargovitza. Here they concentrated more than one
thousand persons, and later transported them, under heavy guard, to the railway
station and sent them on freight cars bound for the Death Camp of Belzitch. The
only ones to be spared were those who had managed to hide, as well as several
hundred youth who had been sent some days previous to the village of Osovatza,
in order to clean the area following a blaze which had broken out. After the
first actzia, the director of the Judenraat, Dr. Englard, escaped with the help
of temporary documents, as he couldn't bring himself to have a hand in the
extermination of the Jews of Buchach.

The leaders of the resistance
movement were determined to put an end to the obtuse indifference of the Jews
who accepted their fate and waited with arms folded for their death or for a
miracle to keep them alive. Among the leaders were: S. Margolit, Tzoler, S.
Evenstein  from Buchach, Bildner and Fisher from Tolomach, S. Zilber from
Horodenka, and the commander, the compiler of these memoirs, A. Bazan (Worman).
We resolved to take action. We added more and more youth to our ranks, yet the
nature of our work made us limit our forces and carry out underground
activities in keeping with the conditions at hand. We established contacts and
appointed Berysz Englard, Dr. Julius Marengel, and Moshe Berger to serve as our
liaisons to the Judenraat. The Judenraat committed itself to subsidize our arms
purchases, since we determined that the time was not yet ripe to forcefully
disarm the enemy's weapons, for fear that such actions would draw notice.
Young people who had been trained in Zionist youth organizations, Gordonia and
Brit Trumpeldor, joined our ranks. We also received members from among the
Ordnungs-Dienst (Jewish Police) except for several who had
cooperated with the executioners in a very effective manner. We made contact
with the Jews of Tarnopol, Skalat, Borshchov, Zalschiki, Tolosta, Kopichinca,
and Chortkov, in order to establish resistance centers in each and every place.
The idea fell upon fertile ground. We received constant updates on what was
occurring in the world at large. The engineer Tzizas from Tarnopol (who was
expelled from Tarnopol back in the days of the Soviets because his
father-in-law was a wealthy man) as well as Weisenger, listened each day to
radio dispatches and their updates kept our hearts and spirits elevated. Dr. Y.
Marengel brought us reports each night from the fronts, and from him we heard
of the struggle with the enemy near the borders of Eretz Yisrael.

At the start of February 1943
we were informed of a new akzia, this time the typhoid
akzia. There were apparently numerous people who'd taken ill, and they
were to be shot to death without being removed from the area. More than 1000
people were executed at that time. The radio broadcast reported the defeat of
Paulus near Stalingrad and the start of a major offensive upon German troops on
the African front. We hastily requested additional weapons to bolster our
supply of several pistols, short-barreled rifles and a limited number of
bullets. We expected to be receiving explosives from our people working in the
tunnels for this purpose, for use when needed. We received word of the
existence of two small groups, in addition to our group which now numbered more
than 150 men. These are the Weisinger and Friedlander groups. I conferred with
them and suggested that they join our group, although Weisinger had different
plans. He joined the Polish group of Nidjbeiski which operated in the forests
of Posznik, yet afterwards he was forced to flee from them since they too
murdered Jews. D. Friedlander and Donier were of the mind to go into hiding in
bunkers in Buchach. The Jews of Buchach quickly began preparing bunkers,
digging passages inside the earth, sealing walls, assembling secret entrances
from the cellars to the shelters. The Jewish Quarter was extremely crowded,
owing to the fact that within the quarter the area had been reduced and the
Germans had herded not only the local Jewish population but also those from
Monsciska, Koropitz, Yazlovsta, Potok, Zloti, and the villages in the area, in
order to increase the ease of their extermination.

C.

We conferred about our tactics
and our plan of operation. I made contact with the Polish Underground and
acquired one of the first pistols to be purchased for an appropriate sum from
the forest guard. I conversed with their messenger Mastinistlebob and received
his assurance that he would supply us with weapons as well as relevant
contacts, yet this promise was not kept. The head of the Soviet troops who
remained in Buchach following the retreat of the Soviet army, conferred with
us. He suggested breaking out through White Russia, an area which in his
opinion had no enemy population and which, he felt, would soon find itself on
the front lines. Taking into account the distance involved, over 600
kilometers, as well as our small numbers and the attitude of the populace along
the route, we rejected this plan and opted to flee to the forest. We
re-examined our stand during the akzia. At the beginning we took a
passive stance, for fear of setting off the entire extermination of the Jewish
population of Buchach. Yet in March 1943 we adopted the decision that in the
event of an akzia, we must assemble in the forest on Fedor Hill and aim to
shoot the Germans. We were convinced that this would result in the cessation of
the action and allow Jews to escape.

We began carrying out military
maneuvers by night, and we learned the lay of the land. We slept permanently in
the fields and the surrounding forests, believing in the false promises given
the Judenraat by the local German authorities. Trusting the quiet pervading the
entire Tarnopol range, we spent several nights in our apartment. On one of
those mornings, in the month of April 1943, we were awakened by gunfire: the
fourth akzia had begun. One by one we moved to the Aryan side, and before our
people had managed to get to their designated posts to open fire, one of our
members, young Anderman from Strivocovtza, was arrested by a Ukrainian
policeman. Anderman pulled out his pistol and shot him to death. He himself
then escaped. The entire action immediately was ended. The SS, the German
police, and the Ukrainian police were concentrated near the local military
police building and began loading their machineguns, believing that we were
about to launch an attack. Our ammunition supply was far too low to dare to
take such a step. The Ukrainians gave the policeman a show funeral,
complete with impassioned speeches. The self-confidence of the cruel invaders
and their wicked comrades had disappeared. Again, they did not set out on a
forceful mission to uncover shelters, knowing well that they could pay for this
with their lives.

We received accounts of the
uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, and this added to our courage: again, we were
not alone in our actions. Among the Aryans, the word began to spread of the
existence of our group as a strong military command. Berysz Engelberg brought us
word from the Ukrainian police commander that not only were they taken by
surprise, they also expected offensive operations from our side.

The Judenraat had promised
money to purchase additional weapons, and we had the opportunity to receive
machine guns. We collected information and acquired maps of the area. On the
assumption that it would be possible to escape to the forest, we decided to
send individual groups to the forests in order to learn the terrain. The vast
area of forest, encompassing thousands of hectares of trees, gave us the space
to believe that our plans to remain alive in the forest might indeed succeed.
We prepared plans to divide our people into small individual groups to bivouac
over an area of several kilometers. This should enable us to easily pass from
place to place in the event of possible danger to one of the groups.

Three groups set out, equipped
with ten days' worth of food rations, weapons, and tools to create temporary
hide-outs. Heading the first group was Artrachter, who knew the forests in the
Poznik region. Heading the second group was my wife, who had acquaintances
among the Sobotniks in the Vadova region, located on the way to
Koropitz. The third group was headed by Nudelman from Potok-Zaloti, who knew
the forests of Sokolov near Potok. After these three look-out units set out, we
tensely awaited their return. They fulfilled their missions under extremely
difficult conditions: heavy rains fell almost the entire time and turned the
forests into rivers of mud. They returned fatigued and weary, hardly believing
that it would be possible to remain alive in the forests.

We received word that the
Germans had taken a decision to completely exterminate the Jewish community of
Buchach. After several days an order was received that the majority of the
local Jews were to be transferred to Chortkov, Talusta and Kupichinska.
Approximately 20 families received permission to remain in the Jewish Quarter,
which had been reduced to a mere few houses. In addition, a labor camp was set
up for several hundred Jews. The first delegations set out and we received
reports that along the way Ukrainian farmers ambushed the Jews, robbing them of
the remains of their possessions. There were even cases of murder.

Among our people, opinions were
divided. Some felt that the time had come to head for the forests. The second
half thought that it necessary to join the refugees, noting that also the Jews
from Stanislavov Range, who had sought refuge from us, succeeded in holding out
for several months. Opposing opinions were held among the leadership and
expressed at a general meeting which I convened. At this juncture in time, I
could not imagine another conspiracy regarding the Jews. We reached the
following compromise: Part of the group would go into the forests, as per the
original plan. The remainder would be instructed to intensify the work of
organizing the groups in Chortkov, Talusta and Kupichinska, and prepare the
groundwork, together with the group from the Kupichinska forest, whose numbers
were growing to our proportions. Srulik Zilber from Horodenka travelled to
Talusta. Upon his return he reported that he had found a satisfactory framework
and understanding on the part of the head of the Judenraat who presented him
with a program for organized resistance in Talusta. I traveled with a group to
Kupichinska for several days to lay the groundwork for our activities. Under
our protection, several hundred wagons set out, filled with families who had
been evicted from Kupichinska. We trekked through fields, since the Gestapo
forbade Jews to travel the main roads. During the night, we passed through a
village whose citizens used to attack Jews. When they tried to hold us up, we
pulled our weapons and they retreated.

After I reached Kupichinska, I
consulted with the head of the Judenraat and discovered full understanding
between us. I received assurances of support and aid to our people. He even
gave us a house for our own use. At our final meeting I had given instructions,
but suddenly we received word from Talusta that the very same day an
aktzia had been carried out. The anguish of our people was great:
They weighed the possible advantages of returning to Buchach and fleeing with
us to the forests. On the other hand, it was very difficult for them to part
from their families, and they decided to remain. I turned over the leadership
of the group to Magister, Fisher and Bildner, and we determined that the
following morning we would set out for the forests and not return, save for
replenishing our food supply and getting news. On my way back, I was stopped by
police from the village of Patlikovska, but my threatening them with a pistol
was quite effective: they cleared the way and I returned to my group in Buchach
where we began intensive efforts towards our move to the forests. Over the next
few days we received accounts from Fisher. His group had already begun working
in earnest and had established contact with former Soviet officers in Husiatin.

On the Friday of their presence
there, we received word of a large scale aktzia in Kupichinska.
According to a secret report, the German police were preparing a list of the
members of our group. On the way to the camp, where I had shown my face to give
instructions to our people, I encountered the infamous

murderer, Policeman Paul, and he ordered me to enter the camp. I was forced to
avoid settling accounts with him, for two other policemen arrived just at that
moment.

Only a few hours prior to our exit we found five of our people in my apartment
on Railroad Street. Suddenly a group of policemen appeared. We were convinced
that the were coming for us, and we released the locks on our ammunition and
waited. These policemen were armed with light weapons, yet they continued along
their way. Had they approached us, we'd have had a chance to seize their
weapons and to settle accounts with them, yet on the street they held the upper
hand.

D.

During the evening hours, we
gathered together and distributed the remains of our ammunition. We divided
into two groups, with one set to leave the next evening for Vadova. Our group,
which numbered 18 people, crossed the bridge at 10 in the evening. Near
Pototsky's land, we crossed through paths between the fields in order to avoid
any undesirable meetings. This was on June 10, a hot and quiet evening, and the
stillness of the night was broken only by the echo of our footsteps and the
barking of dogs in the distance. We had in our possession five pistols and four
short-nosed rifles. In one of the villages we were stopped by police, but they
quickly lost their will to get involved with us and they retreated.

Dawn was breaking. The time was
3:00 A.M., and we, loaded down with ammunition, hid amongst the harvest since
the forests of Puzhnik were still separated from us by over 10 kilometers.
During the day, the sun beat down upon us relentlessly, and in our thirst we
looked forward to the evening so that we could resume our march. We detoured
around the Puzhniki village and arrived in the forest that was our life saver.
Our guide was Helzel Makoropicz who was well acquainted with the forests. We
made our camp in the five-year-old forest where the bushes were thick, yet
suddenly rain began to fall and the next day we were forced to dry out our
clothing throughout the daylight hours.

By night we descended to the
river, bathed and filled our utensils with water so as to be able to cook
supper over a fire made from wet branches. This was our first hot meal after 24
hours of freedom in the forest. Several days later I selected several
individuals and accompanied them beyond Vodova to search for our second group.
We also wanted to determine to what extent we could hope to acquire food from
the forest guard and from the Soviets with whom my wife had made contact
previously. The supplying of our food had been carried out quite well during
the entire time. Two or three times a week we would receive the bread which had
been baked for us as well as other food products which were prepared for us,
yet each time we had to surround the house and make certain that we were not
about to be ambushed. Only afterwards did we enter the house to receive the
food, after leaving guards posted in the surrounding area.

At the appointed place we met
with our people, and joining them were the survivors of our friends who had
succeeded in escaping from the pogrom in Kopichinza. They filled us in on the
details of what had taken place there. The akzia had come upon them
suddenly before dawn. Our group had tried to forge a path to the forest, but
they encountered Germans and the people scattered and hid inside the forest.
Most of them fell victim to the murderers. One of our people, at his post near
a mass grave, managed to pull his pistol and shoot Gestapo members, yet the
gunfire was met by significant resistance. Among the several thousand Jews who
fell were 30 of our people, including the commanders of the Buildner and Fisher
groups.

There were also incidents where
the earth covered people who were stunned or injured, and witnesses reported
that the ground actually moved. Command over the survivors was assumed by
Tziler, a youth from T'lomatcz, who was brave yet had a black past. He brought
those survivors with him to us. We prepared a plan of action for the future and
returned to the forests of Poznicki. Here we proceeded to build our first
underground shelter. Several days later we suddenly heard German-language cries
in the forest. The forest guard led the Germans. We heard several single
shotgun bursts beyond us and then they retraced their tracks. They had no
intention of deepening their penetration into the thick bushes, for they
understood that they might have to pay for this with their lives. We permitted
them to escape for we did not know the area so well and we took into
consideration their superior armaments.

My wife took upon herself the
task of surveillance. More than once she would go, disguised as a village
peasant, to the surrounding villages and gather extremely valuable information
which enabled us to avoid many dangers. Due to our desire to avoid meeting with
the forest gang of Nidjovitski, we moved to the Vadova forests, and after
several weeks to the Sokolov forests. Here we divided into three groups, one of
which was well-armed and changed its position from time to time and also staged
attacks to increase weapons and food supplies. At one point during their
activities on a farm on the Dneister, a police unit suddenly attacked. Our
forces climbed onto the rooftops and began firing at the Germans. The Germans
retreated, yet returned afterwards to take out their anger upon the farmer by
setting fire to his premises. Over time, some of our people rebelled and began
to steal, in spite of our forbidding this. In such instances, Buchach natives
abandoned these groups and those that remained were natives of Horodnika,
Dilatin and Stanislavov. Our people did not agree to such methods. In addition
there was one group among us composed of tens of families who sought refuge in
the forest, inspired by the ideal of the Jewish partisan. Here again the
engineer Zisser carried out his mission: we confiscated a battery-operated
radio, stolen from a Jew. Its broadcasts announced the resignation of
Mussolini. At the beginning of August 1945 we heard of the conquering of
Bilgrod and Oriel, yet at the same time we heard of the extermination of the
Jewish survivors of Buchach.

Throughout the villages,
popular legend held that exceptionally well-armed groups of Jews lurked in the
forests, and farmers did not dare to enter the forest. By night we heard echoes
of gun battles of the Russian partisans, who headed by Kolpokov succeeded in
penetrating to the Dilatin. After they were hit there, they returned in small
groups. We encountered two such groups, yet they refused to include Jewish
fighters, and that put an end to our internal debate whether or not to join
them.

From Buchach we heard reports
of the daring campaign by the Friedlander group, of the breaking into the home
of the Land commissar and of their revenge upon some Aryan
informers who revealed information about Jews in hiding. Three of our people
returned to Buchach. There Margolit, a member of our directorate, was turned in
by a farmer in whose home his wife was hidden.

E.

Autumn came. Outstanding
weather, yet short days which passed quickly and nights which found us by the
campfires holding endless discussions over reports we heard from the
battlefront. On one such lovely autumn night, a group of 25 Ukrainian policemen
attacked a group of Jews who were located not far from us. The murderous
bullets killed Berysz Engelberg and his sister, Dr. Reitman and his wife and his
six-year old son from Potok Zloti, and one of our people who was there by
chance. We rushed to their aid, but we did not find a soul. The next day we
searched the thick underbrush and placed the six corpses in the trench they had
begun to dig, covering them with a layer of earth so that the wolves would not
find them. We marked the place of their eternal rest.

Several days later I went with
two other members of our group to the forests of Puszniki. Among our missions
was to examine by dawn's first light the possibility of our relocating to these
forests. Along the road in the forest we came upon fresh tire tracks. We cocked
our weapons and advanced a total of several hundred meters to suddenly find yet
another corpse of a woman. Once again we found ourselves forced to perform the
bitter task of burying another victim of one of the farmers of Puszniki who had
robbed and murdered this woman who had hidden with him.

During the hour that we spent
carrying out this tragic task, we heard shots nearby. The police had discovered
8 Jews being hidden by one of the farmers and had taken them to the forest to
shoot them to death. This was the high school teacher Henig and his wife and
16-year-old daughter, as well as a family of five from Monstajiska.

Radio broadcasts brought us the
sound of festive cannon fire from Moscow, which echoed and warmed our hearts,
yet the front was still before us and winter was impending. We decided to build
shelters, and the Weitz brothers, Kopel, Manio and Izzio, assumed
responsibility for this assignment. They also succeeded in building several
bunkers which enabled us to endure the freezing winter full of snowstorms. We
dug a pit around four meters deep, two and a half meters wide and quite
thick. At a depth of two meters we erected walls and spread straw and thin
boards across them. We then covered them with earth which we trampled well and
then planted trees and shrubs similar to those in the area. We also fashioned
an entrance, a sort of drawer, and ventilation through underground pipes.
Inside  double beds and a narrow passageway which gave shelter to 16 people. A
kerosene lamp provided light in the evenings.

On one of the winter days, 600
SS men surrounded several sections of the forests. In their possession were
several tanks and artillery. At noon, the opening volley of cannon fire marked
the beginning of the attack. I examined the prospects and firmly concluded that
we had no possible means of defending ourselves. The only option open to us was
to escape through the deep river bed. We murdered two SS men who were in our
path, seized their weapons, and succeeded in removing the entire group from the
attack without harming anyone.

A different fate awaited 300
Jews who had hidden in a different section of the forest. A path led to them in
the snow, and more than 200 were murdered by gunfire or blown to pieces by hand
grenades hurled into their shelters. We came to their camp in the evening and
found people dying, their hands and feet amputated, parts of human corpses who
had been doomed to perish by torturous inferno. We assisted the survivors as
best we could and advised them to disperse throughout the forest since we were
certain that the butchers would return the next morning. We were correct in our
assumption.

Over 100 Ukrainian police
murdered those who had survived, and only 30 people, barefoot and naked,
survived. The police had robbed and looted all that was in the shelters. On the
other hand, we succeeded in hitting several of the murderers on their return.
We decided to acquire clothing for these poor unfortunate people. To do so we
ventured out the next night to a village around 20 kilometers away. There we
surrounded the home of the Ukrainian police chief where, according to
information we'd received, the majority of the booty taken from the Jews was
located. We rounded up all of those present into one room and stood guard over
them. Within an hour we left the house, laden with clothes for the people. By
dawn we returned to the forest. The heavy snow had erased our footsteps, and we
fell exhausted into a heavy sleep.

Our enemies were joined by a
gang of Ukrainian robbers, led by the notorious thief Lutchka, which preyed on
attacking Jews in hiding. Among those who fell into their hands was the head of
the candle factory Katz and all his family. We resolved to eradicate Lutchka,
yet he always succeeded in escaping any ambush. At one point he was injured and
hospitalized for several weeks.

Not one day were we able to
relax from the stringent measures of caution in order during that hard, snowy
winter. The essential mission at hand to supply provisions was carried out by
the brothers Munio and Izio Weitz. They would set out each night to distant
villages, and return carrying food on their shoulders for all of our group.
Sometimes this was done at great risk to their lives.

The end of January came. On one
of the winter evenings a reconnaissance group dispatched to gain information
reported that the next morning the forest would be surrounded. Our people
returned at midnight, and within an hour we left our warm shelter to take to
the snow. The sounds of gunfire, the howling of the winds and the snowstorm
accompanied us during our wanderings. Within 24 hours of Herculean efforts to
dig away at the frozen earth, we had at our disposal a new shelter in the pine
forests near Novosioleka-Koropitzka.

Twice a week we would
invade the villages. From time to time we sneaked into the home of
a Polish merchant to enjoy two or three hours in a heated dwelling, to eat warm
food and to gather news. The front came nearer and went. By night we could hear
echoes from the battlefronts, and we discerned the first signs of a retreat.
From nearby camps, all those who had served the Germans began to escape. We
heard the rumbling of lorries from the Buchach-Stanislavov road: the retreat of
the defeated armies of the herren-folk. On March 23, 1944, we went
down to Novosioleka. The ardent rumors indicating that the front would be
formed along the line of the Strippa River, and the implication that we would
be situated on the German side, adjacent the front, made me firmly convinced
that we must move 20 kilometers eastward. I made a foray into Sokolov and
noticed that the defeated troops were continuing their escape.

F.

March 25, 1944. Silence reigned
over the road throughout the day, and suddenly before nightfall the first
Soviet guards appeared. We are free. We sleep in the village. The villagers of
Novosioleka give us a hearty welcome. It is the first night that we spend with
a roof above our heads, following a year of wandering in the forests. Our joy
at having survived and of being worthy of witnessing the demise of the German
monster was hampered by the terrible realization that we were very few in
number and many, many of our relatives were missing.

Our living conditions had been
terribly difficult from the moment the murderous army had entered. We had gone
into the forest with no experience or prior knowledge, and totally unprepared
for the difficult conditions. We were powered by our will to live and our sense
of national pride. We organized a resistance movement among the youth of
Buchach as our declaration of war against the obtuse and defeatist apathy
towards our fate. We maintained our strength and overcame difficulties.

And we returned once more to
Buchach. We were more than 800 people, most of whom came from the forests, for
thanks to our example others had depended on us and gone into the forests.
Those who had been expelled by farmers who had refused to shelter them also
came to join us. Also returning to Buchach were those who had succeeded in
hiding in the villages, as well as those who had survived through temporary
papers. Yet there was no joy, for so many were missing. However, life has a way
of making its own rules. We soon took apartments and began thinking of the
present and the future,

We arrived in Buchach on March
26, 1944, yet already by April 6 at 3 A.M. we left the city in the direction of
Trambobella. The Soviet army command advised us that this was the sole
direction where passage was still clear, for German troops had advanced on all
sides. We left a Buchach illuminated by fireworks, with an air battle being
waged in the sky and in her streets the sounds of battles on Railroad Street.
Our group was the last to leave, surrounded by the thunder of cannon fire and
the roar of fighting. We could already hear the sound of commands being shouted
in German. Before us was a group numbering around 300, most barefoot, running
in escape upon roads full of mud and snow. People who had sat for one year in
their places of hiding now advanced one step at a time, as if crippled on
crutches.

At 7:00 AM we arrived in
Darachov. Here a high-ranking Jewish officer supplied us with lorries and we
were transported to Trambovlah and from there to Skalat. Along the way we
encountered a large group of German prisoners. How different is the likeness
today of yesterday's world conquerors. At Skalat we surrendered our weapons,
and some of us were taken into the Soviet army. After three months of battle
the Germans continued their retreat, and we returned to Buchach. This time,
from the 300 people who had remained, we met only around twenty. Following our
retreat from Buchach, the German police, led by the notorious murderer Paul,
had returned to Buchach where they slaughtered several hundred people.

The city's Aryan population was
also absent. They who had rejoiced in the calamities of the Jewish People, had
met their own end. They too were forced to take stick in hand and begin
wandering, from the knowledge and unfounded fear that they would be made to pay
for their participation in the massacre of millions of innocent victims.

This short account of a group
of young Hebrew youth of Buchach will be added to the annals of the history of
the vast Holocaust of European Jewry. These pages are a ray of light from
within those days of slaughter and annihilation. While our tale is not one of
the heroic exploits of hundreds of forces, it is nevertheless the saga of a
superhuman endeavor by Hebrew youth surrounded by enemies, determined to live
in spite of all.

A. Bazan

Birthday in a Concentration Camp

Translated by Jessica Cohen

It was April 20, 1943. The town was festively decorated. The streetcars were
adorned with flags.
Above the concentration camp in Lvov, the sun was shining gloriously that day.
Perhaps not in honor of the 'Fuhrer,' but rather in order to provide the the
hungry, weary prisoners with some warmth. It was a real spring day. On
beautiful days such as these, the view enclosed within a frame of barbed-wire
was truly heart-breaking. The SS patrol guards had been drunk since the
morning. The camp administrators took advantage of the opportunity to drown out
the bad rumors coming from the eastern front, in a sea of wine. This was after
Stalingrad had fallen.

The work brigades set off to work outside the camp, in the sun-drenched world,
which to them seemed gloomy and dark. Tired and weakened figures, heads bent,
who once were human beings. At the exit gate they were ordered to sing, so that
people would see how happy they were to go off to work. The patrol guards took
part in the singing.

At the mess in the guards' barracks, many preparations for the festive
gathering were underway. At that time I was working as a sign-maker and painter
in the camp workshops. The camp had to make an outwardly impression of being
perfect and organized, so the signs were frequently repainted. The windows of
the death-huts were always repainted.

At ten o'clock, second in command Diega came to the camp workshop and took
myself and two other people outside. There, we saw that a few people had also
been taken from the technical office. We were taken to the place called
Nad. The inner courtyard was surrounded with a double layered
barbed-wire fence with a two-meter gap between the layers. This passageway was
called Nad. One of the exits from this Nad led to the
sand pit where all acts of murder were committed. The Nad had taken
on the meaning of a passageway to death.

A group of some twenty prisoners was already waiting at this Nad,
including a few women. We were all the remainder of the professional
intelligentsia: doctors, engineers and lawyers, who only by chance were still alive.

Why? No one asked this question. That word had been erased from our
vocabularies, along with another few words. At last there would be an end to
our daily suffering.

As if to complement the gloom of our thoughts, the skies darkened. True April
weather: rain, snow, sunlight much as hope rises and falls.

And then came the SS second in command, Kautser, with an automatic pistol and
eight SS men.

Go! he ordered curtly. No one said a word. We were each lost in our
own thoughts. At that time, none of us had any family left. Some of them had
walked down this very path, or through other factories of death. We were alone,
and that was our strength. Our borrowed time was coming to its end.

After walking for half an hour, we came to the sand pit. I counted exactly
thirty-eight men and six women. A long pit, about two meters deep, sprawled out
in front of us.

It contained naked corpses and puddles of blood which had not yet dried from
the previous days. They only covered the pit once it was completely full.

A truck stood in front of us. Undress! Separate shoes from
clothes! Underwear in one pile! The bloodthirsty SS men screamed.
Quick! Hurry! They beat and struck us during the last few minutes.
And the clothes were piled up as ordered. The first six candidates for death
load our clothes and our shoes on the truck (after all, the Nazi Reich
government was eagerly awaiting our possessions).

The truck sets off on its way. And now it began. Stand! Kautser
screams at the naked group. One behind the other by the pit! I was the
twenty-second in line. Kautzer stands holding the pistol a few steps in front
of the row of people.

Turn! he commands loudly.

And now he is read to shoot us in the back. I see the first man being shot and
falling into the pit, then the second, the third one of them does not fall
straight into the pit, and an SS man has to kick him into it. Only six more
before me! We are all wet from the rain, and stunned from the shots and the
screams. My life passes before me like a film screened in the wrong direction.
I am in shock.

Suddenly we hear a long whistle. The shots stop. Are we already dead? We stand
there lifelessly. An SS man is in the distance, approaching. After a few
minutes he is here, it is the work commander, Kolanko.

I hear a shout, but I cannot understand it. When it is repeated I answer.

Step out of the line! Kolanko growls. Kautzer turns to him:
And the others?

Continue!

I walk as if drunk and my face is slapped, which brings me back to
consciousness.

I look back, the final shots ring out, the entire group has been killed.

The way the prisoners in the camp look at me reminds me that I am naked and
wet. Kolanko leads me to the clothes warehouse, where the SS man Blum gives me
torn trousers, a coat and shoes.

Now Kolanko leads me back to the workshop, where the SS squadron-head, Schultz,
waits for me with a task: to prepare announcements for the celebration.

You were lucky we still needed you, he said with a twisted smile.

The time is one o'clock. The work divisions set off for their afternoon shifts.
The sun is shining again, covering the new corpses with a glimmering veil.

The camp band plays: Everything will pass  An old friend says
to me that night in the hut: On April twentieth, two people were
born.

What do you mean?

The 'Fuhrer' and you!

Linz, Simon Wiesenthal

[Page 297]

Shoah Echoes in Buczacz

Translated by Jessica Cohen

A fourteen-year-old girl writes

The United Committee for Assistance to Polish Jews received this letter, sent
from a 14-year-old girl to her relatives in Israel. The girl escaped Buczacz,
in Eastern Galicia, and reached Trembowla. She sent this letter on June 5.

My dear Aunt Fruma and Uncles Beryl and Isaac,

I send you very sad news. I have been through terrible, difficult days. As I
write this letter, tears run from my eyes. You will probably not believe me. I
was left on my own, entirely alone. No one is left from the entire family; of
all the relatives, only I, Rosa, remain. I have lost my mother, my dear,
devoted mother, Father, Rivka, my little brother Avram, dear Grandfather and
Grandmother. There were extermination acts in Buczacz, and each act sent 1500
Jews to their deaths. My Grandmother Leizi was killed on February 2, 1943.
[Yiddish] Grandmother was killed during the third massacre, and she is buried
on Fedor [Hill] in Buczacz. Where once people took walks, now there are 8000
murdered Jews. Together with Grandmother, we lost Devorah from Potok, and Aunt
Esther with her husband and children. Not one of our relatives remains alive.
After the last extermination act, my father gave me to a rural woman who hid me
from May 10, 1943 until March 25, 1944. Father found a cave in the forest, and
the whole family fled there. They were in the cave for 8 months. Then the
Germans discovered the cave and killed them all. I do not know where there
bones are.

I somehow managed to stay alive through this time with the Germans  I
will tell you when I am with you in Israel.

On March 25, 1944, the Soviets occupied Buczacz. They stayed for 5 days and
then the Germans came again. I barely escaped alive, and went with the Soviet
army to Trembowla. I stayed with a Christian woman and shepherded her flock,
because the Jews who were still alive  and there were only a few 
had no food. Like myself, all they had saved was their souls. I cannot describe
everything to you because I am very anxious. We are now about 22 kilometers
from the front. All we hear is airplanes and sirens. I am begging you: please,
take care of me; please, bring me quickly to you in Israel.

Davar, 1946

P. Lander, special correspondent for Ha'Aretz, reported:

The story recounted here occurred the day before yesterday in a crowded spot in
Paris. A young Jewish man from Buczacz, Adek W., who is currently visiting
Paris, was strolling through the Place de Republique on a Saturday. He saw a
well-built figure approaching him from a distance. He immediately recognized
him as his townsman and childhood friend, who during the Nazi occupation had
been the head of the Jewish Ordnung-Schutz and served as a
representative of the Nazi Gestapo leader, sending hundreds and thousands of
Jews to their deaths. He shouted to him in Polish:

Are you the murderer of the Jews of Buczacz and the murderer of my
family?

The other young man froze in his place, stunned by the sudden cry. Then he
replied: Yes, it is me. What do you want me to do? Adek W. replied
simply: Come with me.

The two went to Adek's hotel. When the door closed behind them and they were
both in the room, Adek asked the murderer: Have you reflected about what
you did? Did you know you were executing innocent people, your own people? Tell
me, murderer, why did you do it?

For apart from the general score of the murder of Jews, Adek also had a
personal score. His childhood friend had come to their house during one of the
aktzias
and executed his mother and father. Only he and his brother remained. During
another aktzia, this friend came again to take them both away. The brother was taken to the
death camps and never returned, and he, Adek, managed to escape during the
search. He hid out through the entire Nazi rule, and manage to stay alive. When
Poland was liberated, Adek began to search for this murderer, his childhood
friend. He heard that he was still alive, had left Poland and disappeared. Now
when he came to Paris with a student delegation, he suddenly found the murderer
walking through the Place de Republique.

Murderer, why did you do it? he shouted again at his friend the
murderer.

And the latter replied calmly: I admit that I have 'killed and also taken
possession.' At the time, I did not contemplate the things I was doing, but now
I know, and I am willing to be punished.

Adek W. knocked his friend to the ground and beat him viciously. Then he began
to stomp on him. The murderer was covered with blood, but he did not utter a
word. Adek W. beat the murderer with heavy objects and smashed some bottles
against his head. The murderer lay in a pool of blood without moving, although
he could easily have overcome his tormentor.

Finally, Adek W. said: And now I will tattoo your forehead, so that
everyone shall know who you are. And with a large needle he began to
carve out the word 
ordnung-schutz
 on the murderer's forehead. He got as far as the Latin character
O, and could not continue. He was exhausted.

Finally, he said to the murderer: Give me your papers. The latter
was bleeding heavily, wounded and cut, his clothes ripped and dripping with
blood. He silently took out his papers, including his passport and an entry
visa to Venezuela, and gave them to Adek W.

You must come back tomorrow at ten, Adek W. ordered him.

The murderer agreed.

Then next morning at 10, the murderer returned to Adek W.'s hotel. The latter
beat him again, until he was exhausted. Then he said to the murderer:
Come with me. They went to the nearest French police station.
There, Adek W. reported the case and demanded that the murderer be arrested.
The police officer tried to evade the demand and said that it was not within
his jurisdiction, and that he should address the higher authorities. Adek W.
went to the Polish consul in Paris. After the Polish consul intervened, the
French police agreed to arrest the murderer. When the next shipment of
criminals to Poland leaves, the murderer of the Jews of Buczacz will also be
sent, and will stand trial there and surely be punished.

Paris, early January 1947.

The story of a girl for whom gold was promised

When the Jewish population of Buczacz in Galicia found out that they would soon
be deported to the death camps, Ms. Sleicher brought her only daughter, Leah,
to the Polish woman Helena Poloch, and told her:

Take the child and care for her as the apple of your eye. Her father
lives in America, and after the war he will pay you in gold.

The Polish woman could not resist the promise of dollars, so she took in the
girl and raised her. After the war she began to search for the girl's father in
America, but was unsuccessful. She happened to hear that in Lodz there was an
institution which took in Jewish children and paid for their care during the
occupation. Mrs. Poloch went to Lodz with the girl, and after negotiations the
committee took the girl and paid the woman 360,000 gilden. But when Mrs. Poloch
went home, she found a letter from America written by the girl's father, in
which he wrote that he was trying to obtain an American entry visa, not only
for the girl but also for her, the Polish woman who had raised his daughter. So
Mrs. Poloch hurried back to Lodz and demanded that the girl be returned to her.
When the committee refused, because the girl was already settled at an
orphanage, the woman went to the attorney general and invented a terrible
story: that three of the committee members had broken into her apartment and
kidnapped the girl. The attorney general summoned the committee
representatives, and they showed him a receipt from the woman for the 360,000
gilden. The attorney general not only revoked the woman's claim, but also sued
her for libel.

Of course, the girl is being sent to her father in America.

Haboker, 9/12/1947.

A. Lanman

Yitzhak Bornstein, HaAretz correspondent in Warsaw,
published the following description on 9-28-1949:

Anyone wishing to know if there were Jewish survivors of a Polish town that was
destroyed, needs only to glance at the number of typed pages neatly classified
and stacked at the archives of the Central Jewish Historical Institute in
Warsaw. Each town has its own corner at the institute  namely, the
history of its destruction. The material includes testimonies give by Jews who
miraculously survived the hell. If a town does not have much of this literature
of destruction, you can surmise that the destruction there was great, massive
and terrible

I was interested in one town, a vibrant Jewish town which had barely been
mentioned until now; a town of 16,000 Jewish artisans, laborers and merchants.
A town which had a strong Jewish social life. A town with any number of Jewish
parties, from the Haredim to the extreme left. There were also people from Belza, Czortkow, Boyany,
Sasowe, Zydaczow and many more. Of all these, not even a single typed page
remains. With great effort, a living Jew from the town of Stry is sought, so
that he can give testimony. There is one testimony there, less than two pages
long, from a living Jew from Stry who escaped the terrible Janowska camp in
Lvov. But from Stry itself, not a soul survived  so awful was the
destruction there.

The town whose history of destruction we are describing here belonged, much
like Stry, to the area where the spirit of the infamous SS General
Katzman prevailed (according to rumors, he is now located in Lebanon). The name
of the town is Buczacz, it is located on the way from Stanislaw to Czortkow.
Buczacz is the birthplace of the famous Jewish historian, Dr. Emanuel
Ringelblum, may the Lord avenge his blood, who, during the terrible
Ghetto Warsaw days, led a group of people from the
Jewish intelligentsia in recording and writing anything relevant to the time.
And when the murderers opened fire in the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto as the
Jews were being led to the deportation square, these devoted people managed to
bury all this material. It was excavated two years ago, and constitutes the
historical Ringelblum Archive.

An Occupied Town with no Ghetto

In contrast to Stry, the town of massacres, Buczacz has a rich collection of
historical material. This town, whose Jews numbered less than half the number
of the Jews in Stry, occupies a prominent place at the Jewish Historical
Institute archives. Many testimonies were collected about Buczacz, detailing
how the Jews of the town were killed. Some of the Buczacz survivors describe
the town before its destruction, when there was vibrant Jewish life. The many
testimonies complete each other and combine into a whole picture of the town.

One of the Buczacz survivors, Yosef Kornblei, says that until the awful war
there were 7,500 Jews, 1,000 Poles and 3,000 Ukrainians in Buczacz. It was,
therefore, a Jewish town. For 45 continuous years, the town mayor was the
Jewish Bernard Stern. After his death in 1921, until 1937, the position was
occupied by the attorney Dr. Emanuel Marengel.

Kornblei recalls that Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum's father died of natural causes
during the occupation, while his mother was murdered by the Nazis.

There were two synagogues in Buczacz, which were counted among the town's
historical sites.

There was no permanent Gestapo office in occupied Buczacz. Once in a while the
Gestapo officers would come down from Czortkow or Stanislaw. Incidentally, the
Gestapo did not need to be present in Buczacz because they had people they
could trust there there were Ukrainian murderers who excelled at their job
no less than the Hitlerists. In any case, it is clear that the absence of
Gestapo officers in the town did not alleviate the bitter fate of Buczacz Jews.

Buczacz did not have a ghetto such as the ones established in other occupied
towns. This does not mean that the Jews of Buczacz were free to move around the
town. For example, Jews were not permitted on the main street, Kolejowa. But
the fact that the Jews of Buczacz were not fenced in and imprisoned was
extremely important, particularly during the pogroms which occurred after a
while: brave Jews who found out in advance that an act was being
planned, fled to the surrounding woods, and those who had the strength to
endure the travails and who were fortunate enough, survived. A witness named
Ferber recounts that he hid in a bunker with 17 other Jews. This was in March
of 1944. Fierce and bloody battles were raging in the Buczacz area at the time,
between the Red Army and Hitler's brigades. Buczacz changed hands twice, and
those Jews who were fortunate and managed to turn themselves in to the Red Army
when it entered Buczacz for the first time, are still alive today. The Jews who
were afraid to come out of the bunkers because of the heavy fire coming from
both sides of the front, were eventually slaughtered by the Ukrainian Fascists
and the Hitlerists as they withdrew.

The First Pogrom Victims

On July 1, 1941, the Soviet forces evacuated Buczacz. 500 Jews went with them
to the USSR. On July 5, the Germans entered. The did not spend long in the
town, but rather continued on their course. However, the Ukrainian nationalists
immediately took control of all the authorities in Buczacz, and as early as the
first day they shot dead 4 Poles and 2 Jews. From time to time the Ukrainians
would kidnap Jews to send them to work for the German army. As they walked to
work, the Jews were ordered to sing Hatikvah and whoever did not sing
would be beaten to death. The Ukrainian fascists
issued various decrees according to the German occupiers' orders, such as a 6
o'clock curfew for Jews, a prohibition against walking down the streets on the
sidewalk, and so forth.

On August 27, 1941, 4 Gestapo men came from Czortkow and issued a command that
all Jewish men between the ages of 18 and 50 must report in front of the
courthouse. Some 800 Jews gathered. The Gestapo sent a few doctors and artisans
back to their homes. The others were ordered to remain standing, and they
themselves went to drink with the Ukrainian doctor named Bonoch. At 4 in the
morning, they led all the Jews some 2 kilometers out of town to the Fedor
Woods. There, they were told, cars would be waiting to take them to work.

There were no cars there, but there were large crates, and the Jews had to
place all their belongings in them. The echoes of shots coming from the forest
could be heard all morning in town. All the victims were thrown into pits that
had been dug beforehand. Among the victims of this terrible massacre were some
prominent Jewish townsmen: attorney Dr. Yedenfriend, two Lustgarten brothers,
Elhanan and Avigdor Sterensus, Moshe Erlich, Elazar Iserlis (a descendent of
Rabbi Moshe Iserlis), Getzil Schor, Leibusch Shoval, Buchwald, five members of
the Hassidic family Kreitner, Anshel and Avraham Isakover, Yoseleh Worman
(grandson of the tzaddik of Buczacz), Yisrael Fuhrman, and other martyrs.
One heroic young man, Yitzhak Reich, escaped the executioners, but was murdered later.

Upheld their Honor

Establishing a Jewish council was not easy for the Hitlerists. Several times
they summoned R' Mendel Reich, a Mizrachi member and former head of the
community, and ordered him to establish a Jewish council with 12 members of the
former community board. He managed to evade this noble job a few
times with various excuses. Finally, he gave into a vehement order that was
accompanied by a death-threat, and set up a council. Besides himself, the
members were Attorney Hecht, Dr. Engelberg, Dr. Y. Stern, Munisch Frankel,
Rabbi Haim Shapira, David Kaner, Kreigel, Dr. Zeiper, Zlaznik and Freund from
the Yad Harutzim society. During the massacre on August 27, the
Jewish council members were also rounded up, and Dr. Stern, Kreigel and Kaner
were murdered.

It is evident from the testimonies of the Buczacz destruction that the members
of the Jewish council, most of whom were Haredi Jews, were not
yes-men, and took a stand of honor and pride. They
did not kneel down before the executioners, and not all the Hitlerists' demands
were carried out. They Jews told themselves that it was better to die with
dignity than to die in shame.

On one occasion, the Gestapo agents from Czortkow came and commanded that by
Sabbath eve (the witness did not recall the date) the Jews prepare 4 sets of
luxury furniture for their salons. The Jews were in no hurry to fulfill the
order, and the Hitlerists were furious when they came to town on Sabbath eve
and the furniture was not ready. As punishment, they imposed a 25,000 gilden
fine on the Jews, which was to be paid within half an hour. But the Jews paid
no more than 5,000 gilden.

The Last Pogrom

In 1942, Jews from the nearby villages of Tlumacz, Cucniow and others began to
be deported to Buczacz. Meanwhile, a terrible typhoid epidemic broke out,
wreaking havoc on the Jewish population. Some of the Jews, who knew they were
destined to die in the bleak Fedor woods or the forests of Belzec, began to
flee to the surrounding woods.

March 21st marked the sixth anniversary of that freezing day when, early in the morning,
the German officers and the Ukrainian police seized every Jew they could find,
whether in their houses or on the streets, and led them all to the bleak woods
on the shores of the Strypa river. That day, 1300 Jews were shot  men and
women, old and young, even small children.

Ferber completes his testimony: I recall some names of the executioners:
Koznowski, the Ukranian Chief of Police and the officer Otomanjuk, and the
Germans Hunt, Feil, Patz and Koch.

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